Developer Levi Balkany, son of disgraced Brooklyn Rabbi Milton Balkany, wants to replace a Central Harlem church with a 46-unit condominium building.
Balkany submitted an offering plan for the project at 308 West 133rd Street to the New York state Attorney General’s office with a total projected sellout price of $47.5 million, records show.
The site was formerly home to the Morning Star Pentecostal Chapel, which had been issued several vacate orders for structural problems with its building.
Balkany could not immediately be reached for comment.
The developer’s father was previously sentenced to four years in prison for his role in a federal insider-trading scandal, which saw him try to con hedge fund mogul Steve Cohen into “donating” $4 million to a couple of Jewish day schools in exchange for protection from the investigation.
Balkany is not new to the condo business.
He previously held the note on Caton on the Park, a long-stalled condominium development site in Brooklyn’s Kensington neighborhood, which was sold in a foreclosure auction. He also recently filed plans to build a 37-unit residential building at the site of a Key Food at 801 Washington Avenue in Crown Heights.
Meanwhile, Harlem’s condo market appears to be heating up, with East Harlem in particular seeing a jump in the number of units in its pipeline.
Tahl Propp Equities recently filed a condo conversion plan for a six-story building at 1325 Fifth Avenue, at East 112th Street. The company is planning to convert the property’s 71 rental apartments to 150 condos.
(To see more property developed in Harlem, click here)